Filed under: aristea, media everyday media | Tags: facebook, surveillance, survey, user
Facebook is a “social utility that connects you to the people around you”. In Facebook a considerable amount of personal data is voluntarily disclosed. Concerns have been expressed about the surveillance mechanisms of Facebook and the implications on user privacy. This post is a small part of paper that examines Facebook as an unsafe place for personal data and how surveillance is naturalized and accepted by its users. (more…)
Filed under: Patrick, space and everyday life | Tags: failure, term papers
With a title like “spacing” you might be expecting a deep considered piece, perhaps about the increasing atomisation of society or something.
I agree with Mr Lynch on this one, but I really don’t think it’s a case of ‘getting real’. That implies that there is a correct way to watch a film, a correct location and method of screening. Throughout cinema’s short history it has already seen a range of different ways of experiencing films, from the mutoscope to the multiplex, and the technological changes have affected both how films are made and, thereafter, our internalised sensory perception.
The advert says: “You know more about maths than you think you do.” Subline: Mathematics – it’s all that counts.
The advert was named “best creation of the day” by a German marketing magazine.
My comments on this a little later – I wanted to leave some room for imagination. I must say I quite enjoyed it; the way it’s made and also the effect(s) it has on the viewer.
.meandomedar
Filed under: media everyday media, sam, theory | Tags: geertz culture definitions
So, we (those of us on the media and cultural studies MA) are about five months in now, and I have a question: what is culture, anyway?
I appreciate that this question is probably unanswerable – probably best unanswered, even – but I was wondering if anyone else could find a succinct definition for what they take ‘culture’ to mean?
My current favourite comes from Clifford Geertz (1973):
“The concept of culture I espouse… is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of a law but an interpretative one in search of meaning.”
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bbc, classical, library, mozart, music, podcast, radio three
Today I have discovered podcasting. Okay, I have known it has existed for years but this is a personal discovery of the value of podcasting. It is not the same as if, for example, I’d discovered America.
It’s of value to me even though I am pod-less. Pod-lessness is becoming increasingly rare these days. So often now I see those little white earpieces worn by people on trains and buses. They are podded. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” does rather spring to mind when I see them. In that movie of course people-like beings actually hatch out of pods.
Anyway, I have digressed. Although I’m pod-less I do have a computer with iTunes which means I can subscribe to podcasts and they will be automatically downloaded to my computer when they are released. On BBC Radio Three there is a great programme called “CD Review”. In that programme is a regular feature called “Building a Library” which goes out early on Saturday morning. Although I’m quite keen on building a library, taking, say the Jubilee library in Brighton as my model, I never get up early enough on Saturday morning to hear this feature.
Now they have started podcasting “Building a Library” and so today I’ve had it automatically downloaded to my computer. In preparation I’ve been sketching some drawings for my new library to be erected in my back garden. Rather surprisingly however the feature seems to consist of playing CDs and discussing their merits. I’m thinking perhaps this is because building a library is a substantial undertaking and maybe we need to be in the right mood for it before we begin.
Today we’ve had some extremely lovely Mozart chamber music and I think I’ll be getting the preferred CD. Something to listen to while sketching the plans for my library.
Filed under: Uncategorized
My mother always told me to aim for the sky, if I get to the ceiling or the rooftop I have achieved plenty. I often wondered what that meant until I got to the university for my undergraduate degree and met a lot of people from different background, some of them inspired me, some upset me but all in all, no matter what my experiences have been, I have mostly been grateful to walk where I have walked and seen what I have seen. Due to my experiences I have decided on my life time goal and this is to become nobody, I found out that nobody has the best of time, I have decided and made a list of why I want to be nobody;
Nobody is loyal
Nobody cares
Nobody understands
Nobody tells the truth
Nobody explains
Nobody loves
Nobody reads
Nobody laughs
Nobody encourages
Nobody supports
Nobody thinks
Nobody knows everything
Nobody has everything
Nobody creates allthings
Nobody motivates
Nobody tells the truth
Nobody is me.
Lately, I have been receiving emails with attachments from friends. Or emails with weblinks to pages only to be entered with a password. They bear headlines like “Sandra is here!” or “More about Enya”, sent to a rather vast number of email addresses round the planet. It is proud parents talking of their newborns, their nights without sleep, endless bliss when the baby smiles, mixed with feelings of anxiety and hope. Most times, the pictures that are sent alongside those emails show the baby on its own, wrapped in warm blankets of all different colours, eyes tightly closed, fists just about sticking out from under the cover.
Thinking about the idea of ritual and the media naturalising themselves within society as the bearer of breaking news, it sometimes seems to me as though the senders of these emails and especially the images attached to them suggest a certain readyness within the recipient.
However, there also is a certain rupture in the middle of life, almost such as the “we interrupt this broadcast to bring you the breaking news…” The immediacy of the message sent out, the sudden closeness between the sender and the recipient is almost frightening, yet so unthinkably frightening that joy is the way to feel when looking at the infant snuggling into its covers. Yet, the closeness remains virtual as the baby might grow up hundreds of kilometres away from where the recipient resides. Life still goes on without the event of actually being close. Until the next “breaking news” arrive.
.meandomedar 
